The Mideast conflict between Israel and Hamas has turned into a global wilfire. Maybe that’s because Russia couldn’t make Ukraine become one.
Russia straddles Europe and Asia. It has been trying to lasso both into its stavle for the last 100 years. It basically owned half of both continents for for near-50 years during the Cold War with Russian Communism battling Western Democracy all over the world. But the Euroasian petri dish for the ill-fated Communist experiment behind the Iron Curtain seemed to havedied with the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union except that Vladimir Putin considered it a vampire that couldn’t die. He tested the waters in 2014, which alerted Ukraine to be ready when he began a full-force invasion in 2021.
Under imminent attack, Ukraine’s army included reservists far from home in pursuit of career opportunities. On hearing the call, they put lives on hold and defend the homeland. In the midst of hostile Arab lands, Israel has a similar arrangement with army reservists emplyed around the world. The difference in the handling of their country’s defense is a valuable roadsign for a global world of near 200 countries in Putin’s crosshairs.
Putin has a history of dealing in distressed nayion properties. Where there’s trouble, Putin moves in for easy pickings that somehow don’t work out for him. As in Somalia and Afghanistan, the US moves in as a ham-fisted rescue team looking for quick results. The upshot is thatthe US takes the fou; vall. The scene is reminescent of the Peanuts cartoon series where Charlie Brown takes a kick at a football that Lucy slyly moves so Charlie lands flat on his back. Putin is pulling that Lucy trick on the US now in the Middle East and he’s doing it with a vengeance because Ukraine saved the US from that fate with its savvy.
Invading Ukraine was just the first of the crimes against international law that Putin has committed in Ukraine. An arrest warrant has been issued against him by the Inyrtnational Criminal Court in the Hague. He deliberately and continually targets civilians in in the most innocuous and vulnerable places like schools, hospitals and playgrounds. He has done this nonstop now for three years with nobody able to stop him. To finish the job, he just may have sebt the Wagner mercenary unit of the Russian army to the Mideast as a surefire d global distraction from Ukraine.
Few hate-based beliefs are as universal as anti-Semitism and Islamaphobia. To pit the two together in a grabs slam way was a stroke of evil genius that only Ukraine savvy could resolve. But to do that, Ukraine must be free and only global peer pressure on Putin can bring that about in time to save the Mideast.
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